Be Silent, Be Still
by Faeline
Summary: A collection of unrelated short stories revolving around Hermione Granger and Tom Riddle:Lord Voldemort. Story 3: Delirium. Decisions made after a severe lack of sleep.
1. Reunion

**AN: **Much like_ Cover Me With the Night_, this will be a collection of short stories that revolve around the Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort and Hermione Granger. These stories are not connected to one another, they are just grouped together for genre/organizational purposes. Some of these may be more vague or choppy than others. They aren't meant to be a fine example of literature. :) I'm just having fun.

**Author:** Faeline  
**Title:** Reunion  
**Rating:** T  
**Timeline: **Sometime after HBP, perhaps?  
**Genre:** AU, certainly.

* * *

_God help me  
Believe me  
This wasn't what I wanted, but no  
I can't leave  
He's got me_

"God Help Me," Emilie Autumn

* * *

**"Reunion"**

When she woke, she could vaguely make out patterns in a canopy, lit by flickering red light. Somewhere in the room a log broke and a fire flared in a grate.

"There's a potion on the table beside the bed. Drink it."

His voice was a little more than a whisper.

She sat up slowly, waiting for the room to spin, and when it didn't she reached out for the flask and brought it to her lips, sniffing softly before she drank. The throbbing in her head stopped, as did the pain in her right arm where her wand had been wrenched from her fingertips. On her tongue, she tasted valerian root and...tansy?

"An analgesic laced with a contraceptive?" she asked.

"Best to be prepared." The voice came from her right and she turned her head. The fireplace came into view, two heavy wing chairs set before it, and a small table laden with food; she could make out ripe cheeses and bread, fresh fruit; the scent of savory meat wafted toward her and her stomach rumbled.

An arm extended from the depths of the chair on the left. A pale hand unfurled. "Come here," he said, and as she made her way from the bed to the fireside, he gestured, "Sit and eat."

She looked over the food, chose a thick slice of bread and a dark, sharp cheese. She ate, watching the fire and when she licked the last crumbs from her fingers, she finally turned her gaze to him.

He was cloaked and cowled, his face lost in darkness. She couldn't even see his eyes.

"Why do you hide yourself?"

"Hide?" The word came out in a rolling hiss of breath; she recognized it as a chuckle. "I am not as I was, last you saw me."

"I know," she said, looking at her hands. 50 years spun out in a matter of moments and there was no evidence of time on her skin. On her left hand, the simple opal ring glimmered in the firelight. She looked to his chair where his hands were resting on the arms. The fingers were long--longer than she remembered--and still pale, and tipped now with sharp nails. The strength was evident in the twitch of smooth veins and muscle as he noticed her stare.

"Stand up," he said, "Come here."

And she did so, barely flinching when his hands shot out to grab her wrists as she drew to his side. He tugged her to her knees before him, pulling her off balance so her weight lay against his chair, between his legs. He pulled her hands higher, touching her fingers to the cowl, using her hands to push the fabric away from his face.

Firelight shadowed the smoothness of a scalp, a heavy brow, found its flame lost in red ember eyes.

She'd always thought she would gasp when she saw Voldemort for what he was, what he'd become. But she didn't. She leaned harder against the chair. Her hands, free now, wandered of their own volition, fingers lightly touching the slope of his forehead, parting to move down either side of his face. She brushed his cheekbones, the flat length of flesh with the nasal openings where once a narrow, arching nose had sat, and ran a finger across the thinness of his bottom lip. His tongue—not forked, as she might have thought—darted forward as she did so.

He scented her skin, the perfume of her on the air.

Then he was tugging her hands again, pulling her to her feet and toward him, drawing her down onto his lap so her legs draped over either side of his own. She faced the fire, the shadows warm on her face. He wrapped one arm around her waist, drew her to lean against him with the other hand, her face coming to rest next to his.

"You don't shudder," he said. There was no awe in his voice; it was merely an observation.

"I told you I wouldn't," she said.

"And you wear this still?" Those unnaturally long fingers had prized the heart shaped locket from beneath her shirt, where it had rested for a fifty year minute between her breasts, heavy with its contents.

"It can only be taken off by the one who put it on," she whispered.

"I remember."

_He'd slipped into her room just before the portrait could close, shooting the maid in the picture a glowering look when she opened her mouth to scold him. _

_Hermione had stood with her back to him, removing her robe, her blue and silver tie. She surprised him when the shirt she was wearing joined the clothing on the bed. He moved forward as her fingers reached for the clasp on her undergarment._

_"Allow me," he'd said and his voice had caused her to jump--"Tom"--as his fingers nimbly undid the clasp and pulled the wretched contraption away from her body. He noted the fine tremble in her arms as she denied the instinct to cover herself. His  
smile was sharp._

_"I have something for you," he'd murmured near her ear, and he'd seen the almost imperceptible tilt of her eyebrow as she glanced at him. He'd pulled a chain from his robes, held it in front of her. Her eyes had widened and he'd felt her stiffen against him. _

_"What is it?"_

_"I...I'm sorry. You just surprised me. It looks...expensive." She'd raised her hand then, slowly, and with the same care she'd reserved for touching the unicorns in Care of Magical Creatures, she'd cupped her fingers around the locket. He'd closed his eyes and exhaled hard, his other hand twitching on her hip, longing to push her back against him, on to him. _

_"It's a family heirloom," he'd said when he recovered. Unclasping the chain, he brought it against her skin, drawing the heart slowly up between her breasts until she shivered. He'd brought his hands beneath her hair, clasped the chain, and smiled as the clasp melted away, leaving nothing but links in its place. "And it can only be removed by the one who put it on," he'd said, when he'd noticed her frown as she'd felt along her neck for the clasp. "So you need not worry about losing it."_

_She'd turned to him then, nakedness seemingly forgotten. "Why give me such a thing?"_

_"Because," he'd said, leaning down and catching her bottom lip with his teeth, "it makes you mine."_

"Are you still?" he asked and she blinked, coming out of the memory.

"What?"

"Mine?" he said, pressing his palm against the locket hard enough to leave an imprint in her flesh. The metal itself seemed to heat at his touch and she wondered if she would have a heart shaped burn on her chest. "Knowing what I did. What I've done." He paused. When he spoke again his voice was lighter, almost teasing--and that, she knew, was when he was most serious--"What I will do."

The knot that had been in her belly since her return tightened. "Yes..."

_And she thought about the boy she'd bowled over as she fell down the stairs outside of the Great Hall after the hex that had come out of nowhere -- the boy who didn't go to Hogwarts in her time._

_She saw him reflected in the glass of her mirror as he crept through the portrait to her rooms. Tearing her away from a group of Slytherins who'd cornered her outside of the Transfigurations classroom, his knuckles white on wrists, his eyes flashing in fury, voice a cold, cold hiss that translated itself easily to each and every member of the Serpent's house.  
Sliding the simple silver band with a small, perfect opal around her finger. _

_Staring at her, unblinking and half-believing, as she touched his eyes and said, "I can always find you here." _

_Pulling her into him--"You will not leave me"--giving her a little shake, hands wrapped around her arms so tight she'd still have his impression the next day. _

_The silver and green glow of the successfully cast counter-hex and his eyes narrowing, one hand reaching toward her as she faded from his past…_

"What was that?" Hands pushed her up, turned her as easily as a doll so she was now straddling his lap. Those long fingers caged her face, and he pulled her close enough to kiss, forced her to meet his eyes. Bloodstone red and burning. "Say it again. Now. Looking at me, girl," he said, and she got the distinct impression he knew where her thoughts had been.

And the knot unraveled, the tension in her spine loosening. She slumped in his hands, resting her weight on his thighs. A tremor went through her legs and she was unsure if it was his or her own.

She closed her eyes, opened them and met his. "Yes."

Something flitted behind his eyes. A spark of blue-black. A scrap of what he once was. Then it was gone and all that was left were the slitted pupils, the inhuman color, and the sudden flicker of an all too human tongue against her lips.


	2. On the Eve

**Title:** On the Eve  
**Rating:** G  
**Genre:** AU  
**Summary:** On the evening of battle, Hermione finds herself robbing a grave. More of a scene than a story, really.

* * *

"On the Eve"

* * *

The night had been full of shouts, screams, and the whip crack of hexes. Stars stained the sky chartreuse green. The silence, when she apparated to the cemetery, had descended on her like a shroud. And the normal night sounds seemed obscenely loud in the hush of the dead. 

She had shrugged off her discomfort, followed the course that Harry had told her about, searching for the grave and for what lay beneath. If bone could restore, certainly bone could destroy, she had thought.

Tonight, her thoughts had, finally, proved right in the tests. And then the battle had fallen and she'd been forced from test to trial.

She was all focus, kneeling before the marble effigy of the Death Angel with its wings splayed to the night air, her mind on the spell that sifted six feet of dirt from bone. She tried to ignore the name standing out stark and oppressive on the tomb.

The earth parted and a moon-white sliver rose like a suddenly blooming flower. Slim and fragile. A finger bone, perhaps. She reached out to grasp it.

"Don't kill her," said a voice, offhandedly as one would remind a spouse to pick up a bag of crisps at the shop. She hadn't heard them coming. No crack of apparation or a footfall. She slid her hand to her hip where her wand sheath sat snug. Too late. Violet light ricocheted off the scythe, blinding her.

She fell back among the grasses, chest aching, swallowing lungfuls of moist air in a panic as she tried to wrest her wand away from the hand that had appeared and wrenched her shoulder as it pulled her from the ground and disarmed her.

Wand light glinted silver off the curve of the Death Eater's mask as he let her fall once more.

The sight wasn't unexpected. What was unexpected, and what sent her shuffling uselessly against the ground, her aching limbs refusing to cooperate, was the movement behind the Death Eater. The pale, cold face coming into view as the half moon drew out from behind a cloud.

She'd never seen him before but she knew the face.

Ginny, while reluctant to talk to most about the time she spent with Riddle, had confided in Hermione one night in Hermione's sixth year, after a particularly vicious nightmare had woken them both.

Over bowls of ice cream gifted from the elves in the kitchen, Ginny had told her about the boy with the black hair and the night in his eyes. A boy, Ginny had thought at first, who looked a bit like Harry, before she observed the coldness of his gaze, the lush and sometimes malevolent impiety in his movements.

Hermione had thought of the marble visage of the angels, blessed and fallen, she'd seen in her books the summer she spent attending an art class, the angles of their faces, the baby smooth curve of a cheek, the ancient knowledge in their stone eyes.

Back then, she had mentally placed black and blue on marble and thought it to life.

Now that marble was gliding toward her and the corners of his sinner's mouth were turned up in a winsome smile.

"Miss…Granger, isn't it? Hermione. I've heard tell you are the cleverest witch of your age." He stopped in front of her. His gaze was heavy and it made her skin twitch. She stared at his shoes, black and half lost in the night shaded grass but for the shine. "But, I have to ask myself 'What, might this clever witch be doing so far from home, so far from her falling comrades, and prostrating herself at the grave of my ancestors…"

She won't answer. That's to say, she can't answer. Her lungs feel scorched and her throat is tight and she's having trouble keeping the world in focus. When she blinks she sees two Riddle gravestones, half a Death Eater, and one and one half Dark Lords turned young again.

"No answer?" he asks. "Pity. We'll have to do this another way."

And with that there are arms around her, hands balancing her against a body, her feet are off the ground and then she is sitting on cold stone and there's warmth at her back that keeps the chill at bay and she knows she's cradled half in his lap. When she pries open her eyes she can see the dagger sharp edges of the letters that make up his name swimming in and out of focus behind his head.

He tilts her chin up with two fingers. His hands are softer than they have any right to be.

She can see the stars in his eyes, silver and white on blue and she wonders for a moment how it's possible to be falling toward the sky; oxygen seems scarce and she can't quite feel her limbs.

Then Riddle smiles, and she can breathe again.

"Clever girl, indeed." His voice is an imitation of the night wind and she shivers. "I think we may have to see what other tricks this clever girl has up her sleeve."

In a matter of moments the cemetery is empty of life once more.

On the ledge of the Riddle grave sits a fragile white bone crossed with impeccably polished vine wood that bears a dragon heart string at its core.


	3. Delirium

**AN:** I've not been writing much in the way of fanfiction lately. But, I remembered this little finished slice on my jump drive and did some tweaking and editing. So, here it is. (Again, it's not connected to any of the previous pieces.)

**Title:** "Delirium"  
**Rating:** In the Teen realm.  
**Timeline:** No idea. It was just a glimpse I had.  
**Genre:** AU, of course.

* * *

_In delirium  
Things are not what they seem  
I am not alone  
I dream_  
~"Delirium," Emilie Autumn

* * *

She always knew when she was dreaming. This time was no exception.

The sky was a shade of crimson she'd not seen since her parents had taken her on a trip to the Painted Desert. Red merged into silver merged into blue-black and the pinpricks of stars were growing brighter toward the apex of the sky.

She was barefoot.

She was always barefoot in her dreams, but nowadays the textures beneath her feet were much more prominent. She could feel the sharp tickle of the grass blades as she walked, the crumbling earth, the occasional jagged edge of rock or pebble unearthed from the soil. She could smell the rain dampened trees. Feel the ephemeral breeze that stroked her skin. And she could move herself along whatever path she chose, explore the shadowed corners of her ephemeral world at her choosing.

Lucid dreaming had been a practice she'd put time into for the last two years. Since the Department of Mysteries. Since the nightmares she'd found herself facing most every time she closed her eyes, nightmares that locked her down, froze her mind.

And if there was one thing Hermione Granger detested, it was not having her mind under her own control.

And so she spent many late hours in the depths of the Hogwarts library, researching sleep and dreams. A few complexly-simple charms and she found herself, if not able to prevent the nightmare, to at least wake herself up before screaming became necessary.

Tonight, she glanced behind her dream-self, saw the world drop off into a smoky abyss. Before her lay stone studded ground, a mesh of wrought-iron surrounding it, silhouettes of tombs rising out of long grasses like slivers of bone.

She felt it then, that tug in her belly, an invisible chord wrapped around her abdomen, pulling her toward whatever she was meant to see.

Time eclipsed, as it often did in dreams, and she found herself further along the sandy path and moving into the grass, toward a hulking shadow of a tomb.

Death in all his dark glory spread his angel's wings and held his scythe close to the tomb as though protecting against any who might draw too near, or guarding against that which might leave. She moved closer, ran her forefinger along the granite, traced the dagger sharp edge of the lettering that was so dark and shining it seemed to swim just above the stone.

_Thomas Riddle_

Witch mother, she thought, tracing the letters of the name, dead at his birth. Muggle father. Patricide.

_Death_, she thought, recalling a quote she once read, _is terrifying because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time_.

She flinched as long, cool fingers swept along her neck, drawing her hair back, gathering it at the nape.

_ What do you think, Hermione?_ came the voice over her shoulder, a mere whisper, chilling her skin.

"I think you traded one kind of ordinary for another," she said. "How uncommon is a serial killer who was abandoned as a child, bullied, abused? Really. There are myriad profiles for this sort of thing."

Silence followed. Then...

_ You've an answer for everything, don't you?_ Fingers curled hard into her collar bone, making her wince and she wondered if she'd ever be able to keep her mouth shut at appropriate moments.  
_But that's alright_, he continued, his breath was scalding her skin as he spoke, flowing down the line of her exposed neck. _Just fine. Muggle science_, he spat, _and even magic theory can't even begin to ken the things that I do..._

Rush of warm air and she felt his teeth close on her. Vicious bite into the oh-so-tender skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and she opened her mouth to cry out only to find his hand pressing tight to her lips. He pulled back, tongue laving over the wound he'd made; he blew air from his mouth making it sting. Warmth trickled down her skin, slipped between her breasts; she knew she was bleeding.

_ Go now_, he said, _wake, seek your answers. I'll be seeing you, soon_.

And she did wake. With a start, sitting straight up on the chaise.

"Hermione?" Ginny looked up from her position curled in the corner of the sofa in the sitting room of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. "You alright?"

"Ummm. Fine." Hermione ran a hand over her hair, patting down static, looked around the room. "It was just a bad dream."

"Another one?" Ginny asked, then leaned forward, hand raised toward Hermione's throat. "Did you scratch yourself?"

Hermione's own hand went to her neck reflexively and came away wet and red. "What?"

She rushed to the small water closet, peered in the dingy mirror over the sink and saw the rivulet flowing over the crest of her shoulder, trickling down her collar bone, red staining the edges of her shirt and snaking between her breasts. She accioed a clean cloth, wet it, and pressed it to her throat, meeting her own eyes in the mirror. Large and dark in her pale face, they didn't have any answers for her.

* * *

**~*~*~**

**

* * *

  
**

A fire crackling in the grate kept the winter chill from the library. Surrounded by dusty books, ranging in age from ancient (the ones belonging to the Blacks) to modern (the one's she'd carried with her) she still couldn't find peace of mind or body.

She slumped in her chair and Ginny glanced over at her.

"How long's it been since you really slept?"

"Six and a half days."

"You've tried Dreamless Sleep?"

"Of course. It doesn't work." Hermione rested her head on her hand. "It wears off in an hour and I'm back where I started."

"Hermione..."

"Don't worry, I checked. The record for no sleep is 26 days. Serafina Murlock."

"What happened to her?"

"You remember the screaming when we visited the 9th floor at St. Mungo's?"

"Oh."

"If it comes down to it...the Draught of Living Death might work. But at the moment, I'm not sure I'd bet a galleon on it."

Ginny stood and moved toward the door, dropping an air light hand--for what could she really say?--on Hermione's shoulder before exiting with a parting "I'll make us some tea."

Hermione put down her quill. It was no use, the letters were swimming together, names mixing and blending and creating histories that didn't exist except in her own mind. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, felt like she was grinding bits of sea glass into them. Specks of light flew behind her lids and her head swam. She let her hands drop, fingertips moving over her cheeks, pressing into aching bones, to the length of her throat. She brushed the bandage on her neck; the bite wound hadn't healed--the blood slowed, the wound scabbed and then reopened, leaking red. None of the draughts soothed it.

When Ginny returned, she found Hermione, head down on her book, deeply asleep, face etched in anxiety. She sat the tea aside and took a chair near her friend and waited, knowing she'd need help waking before her dreams became too awful and destroyed whatever rest she managed to glean from her sleep.

* * *

** ~*~*~**

**

* * *

  
**

17 days. Thirty-six hours of sleep in 17 days. And that was rounding up.

Every time she closed her eyes, she'd see the faces. Hear the voices. People from the past, features that were almost familiar to her, the length of a nose, the curve of a mouth, the flash of green eyes, a strand of red hair.

And then the possible present.

Her mother's face, bloody and broken. Her father's reading glasses sitting inside a pile of ash and bone. Neville trembling with the after effects of cruciatus, eyes glazed and blank. Ginny strewn upon a stone altar, lilies surrounding her, dotting her fanned out hair like snowdrops. Harry's green eyes behind glass--not unusual, until her focus moved out and found them no longer attached to his face but lingering in some acrid fluid inside of a jar.

She'd swallowed more potions in the past two weeks than in 7 years of school and each one had been less effective than the last. Even Snape had seemed lost with the last trial, catching long fingers in his hair and turning from her with the most somber scowl she'd ever seen.

During the day she tried her hand at notes, found her fingers could barely hold a quill steady. Her eyes couldn't focus long enough to garner anything from the books in the Black library. Eventually she found herself sitting alone, staring at the scorch marks in the ancestral tapestry in the drawing room.

At night, she moved through Grimmauld place like a wraith. Fingers trailing in the dust that could never quite be cleaned from the furniture, repeating her steps through the library, cradling her books in her arms and fluttering through pages before leaving them, unread, on the desk.

She heard The Order whispering among themselves only to quiet when she moved into a room.

Sometimes the whispers were not those of Order members, but that of her own voice filling the quiet.

She couldn't remember when she'd started talking to herself.

* * *

** ~*~*~**

**

* * *

  
**

On the 20th day, she overheard them discussing her, gathered in their morning meeting in the dining room.

_I don't know that there's anything we can do. This is killing her. There must be something. Potion, charm, countercurse. She's of no use to herself. She's of no use to anyone in this state. Books have been abandoned. Sharp mind...such a shame. We may have to face it... St Mungo's...  
_  
She turned away, fled up the stairs to her room at the end of the hall, fingers clenching and unclenching in the tails of her shirt.

They were right.

They were right. She wasn't good for anything in this state.

She knew it.

_ He_ knew it.

She stumbled, tripping over a misplaced boot, and sprawled across the thick rug before her fireplace.

She'd been pacing.

The fibers felt inordinately soft against her fingers, her cheek. Maybe if she closed her eyes...just for a moment. Just to take the sting away...

_Falling asleep in this state is a little bit like dying…_

He stood with his back to her. Not the young man of her previous dreams, but a tall, reed-thin apparition in black, skin ghostly pale in the moonlight.

I wouldn't know.

_Are you ready, yet?_

I can't. I can't.

A sigh, high pitched, like the whining of a cat. _Why must you fight me_? _Surely, you see you cannot win_. _No_. _And even if you do manage to hold out for a few days more, there's nothing waiting for you but manacles and a room with no windows_.

No.

_ You're useless to them. A waste of time and resources that could be used to anticipate the next Death Eater attack. To find my weakness... What have you to offer? Mad ramblings? The visions of a deprived mind? You couldn't even think to defeat Devil's Snare in your state, my heart._

She was silent.

Momentarily, she saw him raise what would have been an eyebrow had he the features of a normal man.

_ Well?_

She choked on her own air, the tightness in her chest growing, making her feel like her heart would burst.

Yes. Yes. Alright. I'll come. Please. **_Please_**. Rest--let me rest. I can't yet--I need--

_Yes, my heart. But for a few hours only. And you must rise before the morning. Before any of them suspect._

With her final acquiescence, he left her sight, fading in amongst the grey tombs and the rising mists.

And she slept, her face smooth, her brow creased only with the tension of finding peace after so many nights of terror.

* * *

**~*~*~**

**

* * *

  
**

She woke before the first slivers of pre-dawn silver touched the sky, mind reeling with the effect of a deep sleep, short as it was, after so many days of deprivation.  
Struggling up onto her knees, she sat, pulling at the soft threads of her rug, staring into the glowing embers of the fire. She could feel him, a steady presence in her mind, looking at the orange glow through her eyes...and waiting, waiting to see what she would do.

Unsteady, she rose, turned to her wardrobe and took out her winter cloak--long and thick and the color of a nighttime forest--and wrapped it around her, pulling the hood over her head.

She left her clothes in their drawers, her books by her bedside. Her wand--transfigured into a silver ring some time ago--sat securely on her right forefinger.

Slipping out of her room, she closed the door and started for the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as she could to prevent them creaking.

The early morning hush weighed heavy in her ears as she passed through the front hall and slipped out of the door, into the chilly air.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, on those front steps, staring into the street. Long enough that she began the feel a pulse of irritation from _him_; the wound on her neck throbbed, burned hot and wet behind the bandage.

She _couldn't_ stay, she realized with a sudden flash of clarity. Even if she were to solve the sleepless nights, the haze of her brain (and how bloody likely was that after having exhausted the resources in the Black library, not to mention the one's in Severus' own private collection?), staying was not an option.

Not with this link to _him_, whatever it was.

She was missing pieces; the only way to solve the puzzle was to seek them out.

Moving from the front steps, she stepped into the middle of the street, glanced back at the house. Upstairs a light flickered on in one of the bedrooms. Curtains shifted, a shadow form taking place behind them, looking down at her.

She closed her eyes and apparated.

_**End.**_


End file.
